(I Feel Like Such a) WHORE!

(That was so liberating!)

When I got into blogging like eight years ago, the thing to do to generate traffic in your blog was to blog hop. That'd mean go to Blogger or Typepad, look who just got something published, click on the link, read through the blog, decide whether you liked the blog or not, leave a message on the blog and hope and pray that the owner of the blog you visited will return the favor.

Well, apparently, times have changed. My old blog which should have contained so many entries already got into a lost-in-translation accident in a web cafe with only a Korean operating system. I accidentally deleted the whole thing. Fast forward to this current blog, which is only a few years old and is rarely updated. I used to have really good blogs in my blog roll, as in blogs that you'd really spend a lot of time reading and lose track of time eventually. So, I am currently re-building my blog roll and my blogging mojo (years in the making).

Facebook has this blog community and I joined it because I want to lurk around good reads and hopefully get the people who write these blogs I frequent come visit my blog too (long shot, but hey). The latter thought is really not as important as the former one, knowing that the visitor to my blog may be bored because of the lack of updates. So I joined Networked Blogs with that mindset. after going through the registration and all, I discovered that there is a discussion board filled with people who start topic threads about their blogs, promoting them and promising to return the favor of following the blog of someone who has followed them.

I was uneasy with the idea from the start, knowing that the whole arrangement can be tricky in a number of circumstances. For example, what if somebody is following you and is expecting you to return the favor, with the other person having a blog that's entirely an SEO marketing tool? Or a blog full of religious entries? As much as I fully respect the reasons behind having an SEO blog (I am a ghost writer for SEO articles, for goodness sakes) and I feel it is any one's right to use a blog to spread religious platforms, I am not really comfortable with following them.

I follow blogs because I actually enjoy reading them. Through the whole follow-my-blog-and-I'll-follow yours process, I also felt like I was cheating some people who were expecting me to follow their blogs when I didn't really appreciate the content of theirs. Honestly, it doesn't take much to make me want to read your blog, just as long as I don't see misplaced widgets and fonts of different sizes and colors (I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive when reading) and the content doesn't read like it was copied and pasted from something I can read in Ezinearticles. If I had the urge to read an informative article about how to lose weight with the help of a miracle drug or how to monetize a blog, then I would go read e-How or Ezine, thank you. Other than that, there is a 95% chance I'll read (and eventually be compelled to follow) your blog. The chances of that reaching a 100% will happen if you keep a blog on books, movies, pop culture or current events.

Anyway, going back to that FB blog community, I got to read some blogs that were in those discussion groups and have actually followed some of them. I also felt like I did some subtle (actually, obvious) whoring of my humble blog, just to get into the "I'll follow you if you'll follow me" bandwagon. I have to say I felt a bit icky afterwards. My only consolation(s) is (are) that I did find some blogs that are really fun to read in these discussion threads, and I feel they are really worthy of a wider readership.

So I think I'll go ahead and click on some more of those threads and those blogs, but I won't be doing the vice-versa-following deals anymore. It just doesn't feel right for me. No judgement here; some people have to do what they feel they need to do. As for me, I feel the need to write more.

7 comments:

Hi there!I found your blog on that exact blogging community in one of those vice-versa posts LOL...

I also don't like the idea as I also only want to follow those I really like. I jsut go in there are open each one's blog to see if anything is interesting enough to follow and hope for the best.

I figure that the more I blog hop and am seen in the blogging community (in the circles that actually interest me) the more people with similar interests will come over to my blog too... it might be slower but it's more sincere and targeted in my opinion.

With regard to your religious posts, I don't really mind them. What I'm not really comfortable with are blogs that adapt a preachy or overly moralistic/holier-than-thou tone. Although I'm not really a religious person, I do appreciate someone sharing their faith in their blogs, but not rubbing it into the readers' faces. Yours is A-OK! :-)

i don't have a list, if you noticed. but i do know which blogs i like to visit every now and then. it just takes time sometimes to find them because i have to open my entries and search for their comments. hahaha.

but i get what you mean. i think all of us were blogwhores at one point. :P

Agreed! I don't follow unless I think the content is something I'm going to be interested in reading on a regular basis.

As for the advertisements and widgets...I really hate when there is so much of them that it makes it difficult to read what's written. It can become quite distracting. I try to keep mine pretty organized (or relatively so anyway) so hopefully it hasn't become out of hand. :?

Anyway...glad you found something interesting on my blog...thanks for following! :)